Objectives

The Shift2Rail Innovation Programme 4 (IP4) aims to build a digital ecosystem that meets user’s needs for door-to door travel in a seamless, multimodal and European-wide transport system based on the railways (1). IP4 is expected to radically change the way passengers with various needs, different age groups, economic and cultural backgrounds, gender, sexual orientation, etc. - are travelling in Europe, making railways and public transport more attractive, and addressing key societal trends such as the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and road congestions. However, ”attractiveness” of rail and public transport is not a universal concept: it depends on one hand on complex psychological factors which, from a scientific and technical perspective, we can consolidate in the concept of ”user profile”, and on the other hand on the ability of the system to adjust and respond to them by matching solutions to needs and expectations, including demographics-related aspects such as aging, reduced mobility, impairments and other specific conditions.

To make life easier for millions of passengers, IP4 Call for Members (CFM) projects such as ATTRACkTIVE, CO-ACTIVE, MaaSive, and CONNECTIVE and Open Call (OC) projects ST4RT, My-TRAC, SPRINT and RIDE2RAIL developed (and are developing) a technical framework of sophisticated Information Technology (IT) building blocks that, while performing specialized functions very efficiently, can be flexibly combined in multiple configurations into solutions that adapt naturally to multiple scenarios, avoiding their forced top-down fitting into one monolithic application and digitalization strategy. This contributes to not only making railway services more attractive and intermodal, but to their responding to specific local customer and market requirements. It is crucial that the building blocks and IT developed within IP4 considers market demands.

The long-term CFM project COHESIVE, with the support of the Shift2MaaS OC project, is incrementally consolidating the various building blocks developed by the IP4 projects mentioned above – and also those developed in previous IP4 projects – to demonstrate the added value of the developed solutions. IP4MaaS takes up the challenge of providing the individual IT solutions developed in IP4 CFM and OC projects, and consolidated by COHESIVE, by combining them into solutions for specific demonstration/pilot scenarios in multiple real environments across Europe according to their respective use cases. By collecting and analysing data in these real environments, the project will provide an evidence-based assessment of the IP4 research outcomes from multiple points of view: (i) the effectiveness of the deployment of the IT solutions; (ii) their adaptability to satisfying the diverse requirements of both customers and operators through a common set of building blocks, (iii) the equity of their deployment in society; and (iv) the potential for their acceptance by the market, and in particular by railway operators and their ecosystem.

IP4MaaS will meet this challenge by fulfilling the following requirements:

• Structured provision of use cases: IP4MaaS will provide COHESIVE with relevant, as comprehensive as possible, use cases; those aim to be the basis for COHESIVE’s validation activities, while IP4MaaS will define a methodology, to pave the way for future use cases to be developed even after the conclusion of the IP4MaaS project. 
  
  
• Provision of a methodology for data collection and data analysis: IP4MaaS will define a methodology to address the specific use cases identified in the project. However, the methodology will be designed to: (i) allow data collection and analysis for the IP4MaaS use cases to continue even beyond the life of the project; (ii) facilitate its application to other, new uses cases that might be developed in the future. A homogeneity – possibly achieved through a common glossary/ontology – in the terminology, variables and metrics introduced for the IP4MaaS use cases will allow the comparison of the results across use cases.
  
  
• Consideration of specific needs and expectations of special user groups (school children, elderly people, people with impairments, etc.) for which the railway system should be especially attractive: IP4MaaS will develop mechanisms to measure the level at which COHESIVE is contributing to match the needs and expectations of various user groups (classified according to their profiles, not necessarily with special needs), with needs and expectations of travel service providers (TSPs) in a win-win framework. 

Main project goal and objective
Design, execute, monitor and assess the Shift2Rail IP4 demonstrations by liaising between CFMs, TSPs and users. Execute co-creation activities with all partners in IP4MaaS and beyond, coordinate and assess the demonstration activities with the goal of delivering successful demonstrations and a solid demonstration execution scheme that can be utilised by other projects.

IP4MaaS will execute all activities supporting comprehensive demonstrations of technologies developed within IP4, leading to their execution, the monitoring of their progress, and the assessment of their results in terms of effectiveness (achievement of intended goal and KPIs) and user satisfaction (from the point of view of both travellers and TSPs). Those activities will be enhanced by co-creation and collaboration activities (i.e., brainstorming meetings, workshops, ideation activities) between different partners, thus making IP4MaaS a point of reference for holistic demo execution. IP4MaaS will define an elaborate plan for demo execution, building on knowledge from previous projects (e.g., Shift2MaaS) and extending it. IP4MaaS will not only play a central role in the achievement of the ITD4.7 objectives, but it will also provide insights concerning the interest of TSPs in data exchange, use-cases for technology integration and implementation, and an assessment of the application of a user-centric design thinking methodology in demo execution.

The main objective of IP4MaaS is divided in the following specific objectives:

Objective 1	Design and develop a demonstration execution scheme tackling the supervision of technical integration and demonstrations’ management subjects. The demonstrations’ scheme is the foundation of the demonstration activities because it will define the methodology, organisation and integration activities for the demos. The demonstrations’ methodology will focus on the execution of demonstration scenarios which will be monitored through the measurement, analysis and synthesis (by using a universal metric named Efficiency) of selected KPIs and satisfaction indexes of users (travellers and TSPs). The organisation activities refer to the day-to-day management of the demos (responsibilities, timeline, risk management). The integration activities are necessary technical tasks that will be executed by CFM projects to onboard TSPs partners of IP4MaaS into the IP4 ecosystem. Integration activities for IP4MaaS will be executed at a conceptual level, leading to a technology mapping (see 1.3.1).
Objective 2	Execute co-creation and collaboration activities with demonstration stakeholders for demonstration planning and executing and for aligning the opinions of stakeholders on technology usage and integration. IP4MaaS is positioned as a “man-in-the-middle” project with respect to the CFM projects on one side (COHESIVE, CONNECTIVE, S2R-CFM-IP4-01-2020), and TSPs on the other side. Given the multitude of stakeholders involved, IP4MaaS will execute co-creation actions (i.e., brainstorming meetings, workshops, ideation activities) aiming to address the concerns of stakeholders, generate information that is necessary for the project (e.g., the technology integration plan requires an understanding of the readiness level of the technology provided by CFM projects), and increase information sharing between demo stakeholders.
Objective 3	Monitor demonstrations of IP4 technologies in 6 different locations involving different transport operators. IP4MaaS will assist in the organisation and monitoring of demonstrations of IP4 technologies as determined by IP4MaaS (per objective O1), using input from COHESIVE, CONNECTIVE and other CFM projects (extended to OC projects per the objectives of S2R-CFM-IP4-01-2020 if requested). During the demos, IP4MaaS will assist COHESIVE in their implementation, monitor their progress and provide a liaison between TSPs and CFM projects.
Objective 4	Assess the realized demonstrations to determine the success of their execution and the level of satisfaction of users with the demonstrated technologies. After the demonstrations are executed, IP4MaaS will determine their success by measuring statistics relevant to the demos’ KPIs defined as part of the methodology developed within objective O1. The assessment will delve deep into the actions executed during the demos, to determine the performance of both the IP4MaaS project as a whole, and also of the single demos (number of technologies demonstrated, problems solved, etc.). In addition, the assessment will include the measurement of the level of user satisfaction with the implemented technology (where users can be TSPs or travellers, depending on the tested technology).